Chapter 0011: Flaming Arrows

Grim shuddered, abruptly withdrawing from his deep meditation. Jolting upright in bed, he gasped for breath, the remnants of his dream still lingering vividly in his body. Even the searing pain that had run through him remained fresh in his memory.

Was it an illusion, a mere dream, or something else entirely?

Grim found himself filled with uncertainty and doubt. He had meditated countless times before, but each session had been vague and indistinct, rarely accompanied by such clear and direct sensations. It felt as if... as if he could have manipulated the dream just now at will!

“Chip, perform a full self-diagnosis!” Sensing something amiss, Grim suddenly gave the order.

“Beep. Initiating full body scan… Scan complete. Generating self-diagnosis report…”

As the chip’s prompts continued, a new diagnostic report was projected into his mind.

Name: Grim
Race: Human
Attributes: Strength 4, Agility 4, Constitution 3, Spirit 8.03
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Class: Apprentice Wizard (Novice)
Health: 11/11
Class Experience: 566/1000
Status: Healthy
Class Skills: Scroll Transcription, Spell Reading
Personal Skills: Burning Hands

As expected, there were some anomalous changes in his basic stats. Without the chip’s cellular-level monitoring, Grim would never have realized that his deep meditation had just increased his spirit by 0.03 and granted 2 points of class experience.

This proved that the dreamlike experience he’d just had was not an illusion, but something real and tangible.

But what were those multicolored motes of light?

As soon as the thought arose, the answer surfaced in his mind.

Elemental particles!

Every person with wizardly talent possessed varying affinities for certain elements, and the dots of light he had seen during meditation were, in fact, the elemental particles drifting throughout the wizarding world. His affinity was for fire, so the red motes that had flocked to him were fire elemental particles.

According to wizards’ classifications, his affinity for fire was undoubtedly the highest, followed by the green of plants and the earthy yellow of earth elements. The others were all repelled by his inherent affinities and had vanished from sight.

As for the white mote he’d tried to grasp during meditation, that should be what was known as a dark elemental particle. Since it was incompatible with Grim’s innate attributes, capturing a dark elemental particle was ten or even a hundred times more difficult than capturing an aligned element. Moreover, those discordant dark particles could offer a slight increase in spirit, but at the cost of slowly eroding his body.

He recalled that several fellow apprentices in the tower, those attuned to dark elements, were all rather frail, looking as though a gust of wind might topple them. No doubt, dark elemental erosion played a role in their poor health.

It seemed that an apprentice’s innate affinity determined the efficiency of each meditation session, and that efficiency, in turn, accelerated their spiritual growth.

Reflecting on what he had witnessed in the meditative space, Grim frowned. By his estimate, the number of white motes had far exceeded the red fire motes. Did this not mean that, in such an environment, those attuned to darkness could meditate far more efficiently than he could?

Why was this the case? Shouldn’t the elemental particles of the world be balanced?

Could it be… could this have been deliberately arranged by the tower’s wizards?

Grim’s face darkened.

He remembered now—the master of the tower, Wizard Anderson, was most gifted in dark and wind elements.

No wonder so many of the apprentices who had entered the Marsh Tower with him had already mastered two or three spells and advanced to intermediate level, while he still struggled as a novice. It wasn’t merely talent holding him back, but this damnable “hostile” environment as well.

After a moment’s hesitation, Grim decided not to attempt another meditation just yet. For a novice like him, meditation could slightly enhance his spirit, but could not replace sleep. To recover quickly and fully, a sound, worry-free sleep was still best.

Looking at his depleted spirit, Grim shook his head with a wry smile, then lay back down and quickly fell into a deep slumber.

…

The next morning, Grim was abruptly awakened by the chip’s alert ringing suddenly in his mind.

To his astonishment, the chip had completed the solidified mental model for Burning Hands.

Soon, all the data pertaining to this model flooded his awareness.

Burning Hands, a low-level fire spell suitable for both offense and defense, was not particularly powerful. Yet, the spell model comprised no fewer than twenty-eight runes. Each rune possessed a tongue-twisting pronunciation and a nearly independent function; though seemingly unrelated, they meshed together to form a complete magical construct.

If an ordinary person were tasked with memorizing these twenty-eight interlinked incantations and reciting them flawlessly in sequence, few would succeed.

Had it been when Grim first arrived in this world, he wouldn’t have believed himself capable either. Yet, in this land saturated with elemental energy, he found it effortless.

Of course, his high spirit score of eight played a role.

Previously, chanting all twenty-eight incantations for Burning Hands took Grim five to seven seconds. But now, with the model solidified, he could skip the incantation entirely and simply channel elemental energy into the mental construct.

This meant he could cast a fully-formed Burning Hands in just two or three seconds—a dramatic reduction in casting time. With further mastery of fire, he could compress this even further.

And the good news didn’t end there.

Because the model was now fixed in his mind, he no longer needed to expend spirit constructing it each time. A spell that previously cost two points of spirit now required only one.

This effectively doubled the number of spells he could cast!

This discovery filled him with elation.

But just then, the chip’s voice sounded once more in his mind.

“Beep. Further optimization possible for this model. Confirm optimization? Note: Optimization will consume one spirit point per day and requires one hundred class experience points. Estimated time: thirty-four hours, twenty-five minutes.”

Enhance Burning Hands?

It certainly sounded tempting. But why did it require so much experience? If every operation on mental models consumed precious experience, the points he’d accumulated over six years would soon be exhausted.

Grim, undazzled by unexpected delight, considered carefully and refused.

Firstly, Burning Hands was a close-range spell with limited combat value. It would inevitably be replaced by more valuable long-range or defensive spells, so further investment made little sense.

Secondly, given his current spirit, his mental space could hold no more than three solidified models. In such a circumstance, reserving precious space for a low-value spell was not optimal for future growth.

Grim, by nature, preferred to prioritize long-range attack spells, and he already had a candidate in mind.

It was another fire spell he’d been studying for half a year—Flame Arrow.

Flame Arrow, a low-level fire spell, condensed elemental fire into a magical arrow that struck a target for seven points of physical damage and eighteen points of explosive fire damage.

Given Grim’s paltry three constitution and eleven health, a single Flame Arrow could kill him outright. For this reason, he had long yearned for a ranged attack spell.

Unfortunately, even a low-level spell like Flame Arrow comprised thirty-four runes. Despite six months of arduous study, he had yet to grasp the method for constructing its mental model.

He had already invested at least twenty knowledge points and vast amounts of time into Flame Arrow, even delaying his other magical studies. Yet he remained just outside the threshold of mastery, not yet among the elite apprentices who wielded multiple spells.

But now, with the chip’s assistance, perhaps the hurdle would be lowered!

Excitedly, paying no heed to the fact that it was breakfast time, Grim washed up hurriedly, seated himself at the wooden table, and opened his spellbook. Every aspect of Flame Arrow—its magical model, incantations, spirit oscillation frequencies, and casting materials—had been meticulously recorded.

True spellcasting was nothing like ordinary folk imagined. The thirty-four incantations could not simply be recited in one breath from the text to cast the spell. The process required perfect synchronicity of hand, voice, mind, and will.

For each incantation, Grim’s spirit had to shift to the corresponding oscillation frequency, and his hands had to form the necessary gestures.

Any mistake or delay in the process led to only one consequence—magical backlash.

Such backlash wouldn’t kill an apprentice, but the resulting spiritual injury could take a long time to heal. Frequent wounds to the spirit could even lead to lasting decline.